Team:Peking/HumanPractice/SowingTomorrowSyntheticBiologists/Lecture

On July 14th, with the help of Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club, we gave a series of lectures under the theme of "Life as Machines --- Rational Design for Artificial Biological Systems", presenting a basic concept and research methods of Synthetic Biology and introducing affairs of the iGEM HS Division. Hundreds of students have attended the lecture.

Figure 8. Lecture "Life as Machines --- Rational Design for Artificial Biological Systems".

The first lecture, "Introduction to Synthetic Biology" was given by one of our team members, Xing Wenmin. At the beginning of the lecture, Wenmin asked a question, "What is biology in your mind?", which strongly captured students' imagination and then led to our theme --- Life as Machines. This introductory lecture covered some fancy work of Synthetic Biology these years, such as the colorful and aromatic E.coli, as well as fundamental biological knowledge necessary for better understanding of synthetic biology, such as E.coli in the laboratory, central dogma, gene regulation and biosensor.

The second lecture, "Research guideline of Synthetic Biology" was given by Xiong Hongyu, our deputy team leader. He analoged the research guideline of Synthetic Biology to the engineering cycle and used a typical project, "A synthetic biological approach to solve heavy metal contamination", which is Peking 2010's project, as a demonstration. The lecture exhibited a research guideline as "specification --- design --- modeling --- test --- production" and revealed that the researching approachs have combined methods in multiple subjects such as physics, biology, and chemistry.

The last lecture, "iGEM HS-Division in a Nutshell", was given by Zhou Wenyuan, our another deputy team leader. As the most important part, the introduction of iGEM HS-Division is designed to motivate high school students to participate in the iGEM competition and so to encourage them to become future synthetic biologists. Hence, Wenyuan firstly introduced what iGEM HS-Division is and told the students what their American peers feel about the iGEM, who have previously taken part in the competition. Then Wenyuan introduced the application prospects of Synthetic Biology. Finally he took the team of Heidelberg last year as an example, seriously introducing the procedure of participating in the iGEM contest.

Then a sharing session was held to provide a chance for secondary students to ask their questions upon their new knowledge in Synthetic Biology and iGEM, and to share their opinions about this activity.

Figure 9. Students are seriously listening to the lectures.

Figure 10. Students are discussing the topics covered in the lectures.

Figure 11. Students are consulting How to establish a iGEM HS team to participate in the competition.

Figure 12. A group photo of Peking2012 team and Ms Zhou Lin, the Chief Secretary of BTSTC. (Ms Zhou is on the right hand side)

The lectures turned to be a huge success. After the lecture, most of students came close to the Peking iGEM team members and actively asked for suggestion about forming an iGEM team and for guidance of their experiments. In fact, students from Beijing No.4 High School and The Second High School attached to Beijing Normal University are willing to form team to take part in the coming iGEM HS competition in 2013. The splendor of this occasion was recorded by the club and was put on its official website Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club.

The Peking iGEM team members XIONG Hongyu, XING Wenmin, and ZHOU Wenyuan presented a vivd description of the concept and the research guideline of Synthetic Biology, and clearly explained matters of iGEM High School Division. Today's lecture is certainly a good start and I believe more and more students will be attracted to Synthetic Biology.

------ Ms Zhou Lin, the Chief Secretary of Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club

"To those high school students, this mysterious subject exhibits the possibility to design an artificial bio-system which functions as they want, an excellent idea not only challenging the students' intelligence, but also encouraging them to work together to explore the charming nature."

------ Ms Lee Xuemei, the Science Director in Beijing No.4 High School

"Incredible! I never thought of improving our lives in this way. The research guideline is so simple that I'm itching for a try myself in iGEM!"

------ A student from Beijing No.166 High School

"I'm so happy to get touch with the very frontier of the scientific research today and deeply impressed by the elegance of revealing the mystery of nature. Thank you, Peking iGEM, I've learnt a lot."

------ A student from The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China

"Synthetic Biology is such a interdisciplinary subject that knowledge of Biology, Physics and Chemistry are all incorporated, so we are enabled to work together to create our own living machines."

------ A student from The High School Affiliated to BIT

"Synthetic Biology is very exciting and of great potential!"

------ A student from Dongzhimen High School